This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Marc Logemann. Original Post: VPN over Bluetooth on MacBook - THE HELL! Feed Title: Logemann Blog Feed URL: http://www.logemann.org/blojsom/blog/default/?flavor=rss2 Feed Description: Marc's thoughts on Java and more Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Marc Logemann Latest Posts From Logemann Blog

At the moment i am really fed up with the VPN situation on my MacBook. Lets recap what equipment i am using: Nokia N70 Smartphone with UMTS and a MacBook Pro. Thanks to the advent of ExpressCards, there is currently no chance to get a UMTS mobile card. Its incredible that no damn vendor has seen a market here. So if you want to use UMTS on your MacBook, you definitely have to go the BT way. Now the funny thing, no VPN client capable of connecting to CISCO appliances can handle BT connections. I checked the Cisco VPN Client and VPNTracker, the most used 3rd party VPN client on Mac OS X. Both cant handle it.

Now i thought about using a man-in-the-middle server like a linux server on which i connect and which in turn connects to my customer via VPN but of course this goes nowhere since the VPN client (the linux server) will cancel my remote connection upon connecting.

So my best bet is to use a different OS on my macbook which can somehow handle the bluetooth connection. But then you get some other problems. First, what OS to use. I have Windows XP on my Mac (Bootcamp), perhaps i can use this. I could also boot linux via Parallels, but i dont know if Parallels supports the bluetooth device in the macbook, i doubt so. Parallels has really poor device support so far.

So if anyone has a nice idea, feel free to tell me. Sometimes i am wondering how others are doing this? Am i the only MacBook user that actually does some enterprise level stuff here? All of my customers provide me with VPN access to their servers. And believe it or not, sometimes i am on the road and want to connect to customer servers.